Maya Angelou Quotes On Writing

In her latest volume, a collection of essays, acclaimed poet and memoirist Dr. Maya Angelou shares life lessons from her experiences. Dedicated to the girl she never had merely sees all around her, "Letter of the alphabet to My Girl" reveals Angelou's path to living well and living a life with meaning. In this extract, she writes about losing her virginity, getting pregnant and the definition of "home."

Chapter ane: Abode

I was born in St. Louis, Mo., but from the age of three I grew up in Stamps, Ark., with my paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, and my father'south brother, Uncle Willie, and my only sibling, my brother, Bailey.

At xiii I joined my mother in San Francisco. Later I studied in New York Metropolis. Throughout the years I have lived in Paris, Cairo, Due west Africa, and all over the United States.

Those are facts, just facts, to a kid, are merely words to memorize, "My name is Johnny Thomas. My accost is 220 Eye Street." All facts, which have little to do with the kid's truth.

My real growing upwards world, in Stamps, was a continual struggle confronting a condition of surrender. Surrender kickoff to the grown-up human beings who I saw every day, all blackness and all very, very large. Then submission to the idea that black people were inferior to white people, who I saw rarely.

Without knowing why exactly, I did non believe that I was inferior to anyone except maybe my blood brother. I knew I was smart, but I also knew that Bailey was smarter, maybe because he reminded me often and fifty-fifty suggested that maybe he was the smartest person in the world. He came to that determination when he was nine years sometime.

The S, in full general, and Stamps, Ark., in particular had had hundreds of years' experience in demoting even big adult blacks to psychological dwarfs. Poor white children had the license to address lauded and older blacks by their first names or by any names they could create.

Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America'south dandy novel that "You Can't Go Home Again." I enjoyed the book just I never agreed with the title. I believe that one tin can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one'southward skin, at the farthermost corners of ones eyes and perchance in the gristle of the earlobe.

Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors, are mysterious apparitions, who come, get, and do strange unfathomable things in and around the kid, the region'south only enfranchised denizen.

Geography, as such, has piddling meaning to the child observer. If one grows up in the Southwest, the desert and open skies are natural. New York, with the elevators and subway rumble and millions of people, and Southeast Florida with its palm copse and sun and beaches are to the children of those regions, the ways the outer globe are, has been, and will always be. Since the kid cannot control that environment, she has to observe her own identify, a region where only she lives and no 1 else tin can enter.

I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and accolade our credit cards. Nosotros ally and dare to take children and phone call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly abound old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but mostly our real selves, the children within, are notwithstanding innocent and shy as magnolias.

We may act sophisticated and worldly only I believe we feel safest when we become inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.

Chapter three: Revelations

Information technology had to be the days of Revelations. The days John the revelator prophesied. The earth shuddered every bit trains thundered upwardly and down in its black abdomen. Private cars, taxis, buses, surface trains, trucks, delivery vans, cement mixers, commitment carts, bicycles, and skates occupied the air with honks, toots, roars, thuds, screams, and whistles, until the very air seemed thick and lumpy like bad gravy.

People from everywhere, speaking every known linguistic communication had come up to boondocks to lookout man the end and the beginning of the world.

I wanted to forget about the enormity of the day so, I went to the Fillmore Street 5 & Dime shop. It was an acre wide shop where dreams hung on plastic stands. I had walked upwardly and downwards its aisles a thousand times over. I knew its seductive magic. From the nylon slips with cardboard tits to the cosmetic counter where lipsticks and nail polish were pink and red and green and bluish fruits fallen from a rainbow tree. That was the city, when I was sixteen and make-new like daybreak. The day was so important I could hardly exhale. A male child who lived upwardly the street from me had been asking me to be intimate with him. I had refused for months. He was non my boyfriend. Nosotros were not even dating. Information technology was during that time that I noticed my body's expose. My vox became deep and husky, and my naked image in the mirror gave no intimations that it would ever become feminine and curvy. I was already half-dozen feet alpine and had no breasts. I thought mayhap if I had sexual activity my recalcitrant body would grow upwardly and carry as it was supposed to comport. That morning the boy had telephoned and I told him yep. He gave me an accost and said he would see me there at eight:00 o'clock. I said yeah. A friend had lent him his apartment. From the moment I saw him at the door I knew I had made the wrong pick. There were no endearments spoken, no warm caresses shared. He showed me to a chamber, where we both undressed. The fumbling engagement lasted fifteen minutes, and I had my clothes on and was at the front door. I don't remember if nosotros said goodbye. I do recollect walking down the street, wondering was that all there was and how much I wanted a long soaking bath. I did get the bathroom and that was non all there was. 9 months after, I had a cute baby boy. The birth of my son caused me to develop plenty backbone to invent my life. I learned to love my son without wanting to possess him and I learned how to teach him to teach himself. Today, over 40 years later, when I look at him and see the wonderful human being he has get, the loving husband and father, the adept poet and fine novelist, the responsible citizen and the world'south greatest son, I thank the Creator that he was given to me. The Revelation is that day, so long ago, was the greatest twenty-four hours of my life — Hallelujah!

Chapter four: Giving nascencyMy blood brother Bailey told me to keep my pregnancy a clandestine from my mother. He said she would take me out of schoolhouse. I was very close to graduating. Bailey said I had to accept a high school diploma before mother returned to San Francisco from the nightclub she and her married man owned in Nome, Alaska. I received my diploma on VJ day which was also my step-father's birthday. He had patted me on the shoulder that morning and said, "Yous are growing upwardly and y'all are becoming a fine young woman." I thought to myself I should, I am eight months and one week meaning. Subsequently a salutary dinner celebrating his birthday, my graduation, and a national victory, I left a note on his pillow proverb, "Dad, I am lamentable to bring disgrace to the family, merely I take to tell y'all that I am pregnant." I didn't sleep that night. I heard my dad get to his room about 3:00 a.k. When he didn't knock on my door immediately, I puzzled over whether he had seen and read the annotation. There would be no slumber for me that dark. At eight:30 in the morning time he spoke at my door. He said, "Baby, come down and have java with me, past the way — I got your note." The sound of him walking away was not almost every bit loud as the audio of my centre racing. Downstairs at the table he said, "I'thousand going to telephone call your mother. How far along are you?" I said, "I have three weeks." He smiled. "I'grand sure your mother volition be here today."

Nervous and frightened are not words which even barely describe how I was feeling. Before nightfall my pretty little mother walked into the house. She gave me a buss then looked at me. "You lot're more than than any three weeks pregnant." I said, "No ma'am, I'one thousand eight months and one week significant." She asked, "Who is the boy?" I told her. She asked, "Do yous beloved him?" I said, "No." "Does he love you?" I said, "No, he's the only person with whom I had sex and we were together only one time." My mother said, "There is no reason to ruin three lives; our family is going to have a wonderful baby." She was a registered nurse so when I began labor she shaved me, powdered me and took me to the hospital. The physician had non arrived. Mother introduced herself to the nurses and said every bit a nurse herself, she was going to help with the delivery. She crawled upwards on the commitment table with me and had me bend my legs. She put her shoulder against my knee and told me dirty stories. When the pains came she told me the dial line of the stories and every bit I laughed, she told me, "Acquit downwardly." When the baby started coming, my petty mother jumped off the tabular array and seeing him emerge, she shouted, "Here he comes and he has blackness pilus." I wondered what color she thought he might have. When the baby was delivered, my female parent caught him. She and the other nurses cleaned him, wrapped him in a coating and she brought him to me. "Here my infant, here'south your beautiful baby." My dad said when she returned dwelling house, she was so tired, she looked as if she had given nascency to quintuplets. She was and then proud of her grandson and proud of me. I never had to spend one minute regretting giving nascency to a child who had a devoted family unit led by a fearless, doting, and glorious grandmother. And so I became proud of myself.

Excerpted from "Letter to My Daughter" by Maya Angelou. Copyright © 2008 by Maya Angelou. Excerpted past permission of Random House Group, a division of Random Business firm, Inc. All rights reserved. No function of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.